


Stomp Across the Knife's Edge

by Aryllia



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Chronic Pain, Happy Ending, Little Mermaid AU, M/M, Magic, Merformers, Mobility Aids, Pining, Polyamory, Threesome - M/M/M, ambiguously humanformers or softbody but I won't give detailed descriptions, mermaids aren't that cute here though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26817622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aryllia/pseuds/Aryllia
Summary: The Little Mermaid, except instead of a pretty redhead it's Whirl.
Relationships: Cyclonus/Tailgate/Whirl (Transformers)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Don't expect this to follow the Disney version too closely. I've watched that movie once, many years ago. The H. C. Anderson on the other hand I actually own a copy of, though the true inspiration for this fic is Paul Shapera's Little Mermaid album, which is essentially the HCA story but with added music.

_Once upon a time, there was a hideous sea creature named Whirl. He was a nasty piece of work, a violent thing that sank ships to feast on sailors. He was ugly to match, scarred and mutilated. The only things more hideous were the strange toothy monsters that lived in the sunless depths. He wore his ugliness as a badge and had done so for many years._

Whirl and his fellow ship wreckers were stalking a fleet's flagship, some great big behemoth that had engaged in a spot of warfare. They knew it was the flagship, on account of the many cannons it carried, the very handsome prince in the purple coat stalking around on deck, and the flag. The wreckers had eaten very well on the unfortunate souls aboard the ships that the fleet had sunk, so they were all feeling quite charitable towards the prince.

Whirl felt a little extra charitable towards the prince because of his stargazing habit during the night, since that provided Whirl with opportunities for princegazing. He was rather handsome for a land creature, tall and rigid and very composed no matter how rough the sea got. And cheekbones so sharp that a sufficiently determined individual could cut someone open with them. Sometimes, when he thought he was alone, he’d sing. If one was generous enough with the definition of song. Whirl had never heard a more atrocious singing voice in his life, and he had heard a lot of whales and seagulls. It was heartening to know that pretty people could suck too.

The ship was currently heading back to its home harbour, and it seemed increasingly unlikely that the wreckers would get any more free meals out of it. Still, they’d follow it for a while longer, as it would pass over their old hunting ground in queen Ariel’s territory on its way. Whirl clung to a keel like a barnacle, hitching a free ride and allowing himself to doze off a little. Surface-side, the winds had picked up a little, but that was not Whirl’s problem.

Whirl woke up to a full-blown storm, people and junk raining down through the sea while his fellow wreckers darted around to catch one last free dinner. Amid the debris, he saw purple where the prince was sinking - with a large gash in his head. The water quickly filled with the taste of blood.

Whirl whipped after him, dodging through the mayhem. He caught the prince, and contrary to all his instincts, he fought his way towards the surface. The prince was absurdly heavy but miraculously still had life signs when Whirl got him above the waves. Whirl almost dropped him when Springer, true to his name, sprung up right next to him.

“Back off, he’s mine!” Whirl shouted. 

Springer held up his hands in surrender.

“Fine, fine, plenty others for us. Take his coat off if you’re keeping him alive, that’s all.”

Springer disappeared under the waves again, presumably to inform the others that Whirl might go AWOL because of a mental instability flare-up. With a lot of cursing and wriggling, Whirl managed to peel off the sodden coat without dunking the prince’s head under the water more than a few times. He still had life signs, so Whirl assumed that he was okay.

The shore was still far away, but Whirl could see a blinking light in the distance. Hopefully, it was the lighthouse by the harbour that the ship had been steering towards. He adjusted his grip on the now much lighter prince and set off in that direction.

Keeping the prince above the surface while the waves tossed them about was tricky business, but at least he had the good grace to stay unconscious. If he’d been awake and flailing about, then the temptation to dunk him underwater on purpose would have been too great. Whirl was fighting enough instincts already.

When Whirl finally - finally! - grasped rocks and sand under his claws, the storm had moved on to bother someone else, and dawn was breaking. His entire body was aching with fatigue, and after hauling the stupid prince above the shoreline, it was tempting to lay down and let himself fry in the sunlight. But frying is for losers, so Whirl rolled his gangly self back into the sea and curled up in the shadow of a few rocks, one ear above the waterline.

He woke up some indeterminable time later from some commotion on the beach. Someone had found the prince and alerted a whole boatload of other people, most of whom were swarming the beach, cawing nervously without doing all that much. Well, they weren’t eating the prince, and one shortstack was even helping him get upright, so Hot Stuff McLardass would be fine.

Right on time, the prince gestured out towards the sea, presumably to explain where his fancy coat had gone or something. The shortstack looked almost right at Whirl for a split second, but then he was distracted when the prince dropped unconscious again.

Whirl saluted with the rudest gesture his mangled hands could produce and swam off towards the depths to contemplate why the fuck he had bothered with all that.

That could have been the end of it.  
  
That should have been the end of it.  
  
It wasn't the end of it.  
  
Instead, Whirl kept swimming back to the shore whenever he could, which was quite often since shipwrecking was a very fluid job that wasn’t so much a job as it was wanton destruction and easy kills. Some of the other wreckers grumbled since Drift, their newest recruit, was missing on account of getting hitched to Ratchet, which meant the group was a little on the short side, but they’d live.  
  
He didn’t go to the beach more than to make a quick check. There was hardly ever anyone there now that there wasn’t a royal spectacle to ogle. Instead, he made his way to the harbour, where land people were more likely to gather. He rarely saw the prince, but he caught gossip, and stolen food, by hiding under the docks. Once he figured out how to unseen liberate the land-people of various bottles left near the water, it was a rather pleasant pastime, even if everything in the harbour stank like a whale carcass.  
  
The harbour was a place of smells, but also noises and constant activity. Sometimes it was a little too much, and somehow Whirl could still never get enough. The air itself was fascinating, so unlike water. It couldn’t carry any weight (unless you were a seagull), but it also didn’t put up any resistance. Whenever there was no food to steal, Whirl could throw rocks at the seagulls to knock them out of the air. And sounds, sounds sound weird in the air. Sounds could barely reach anywhere at all, which was for the best, or he would go deaf from the din but still. Weird.  
  
As far as prince stalking went through, hanging around the harbour was inefficient. For all that he learned, it wasn’t quite like spying on the prince by the boat. Finally, he was desperate enough to ask Kup, the oldest of the wreckers and officially retired, for some good old wisdom and guidance.

“Land creatures, huh?” Kup asked, chewing a tightly rolled wad of seaweed.  
  
“Yeah, land creatures. You know, two-legged critters that sometimes pass by in boats, we eat them on the regular. How do I catch one that’s on land?”  
  
“You don’t.”  
  
“Oh, fuck off! They fall down here all the time. There has got to be a way for us to get up there.”  
  
Kup scoffed and batted away Whirl’s claws when they got too close to his face.  
  
“Yes, and that’s called a beaching. Listen, sometimes you see sky creatures fall down to the land or into the ocean, but we can’t get up on land any more than the land creatures can get up in the sky. Only land creatures can walk on land, and becoming one is not worth the price.”  
  
“Hm, I guess there’s no point in- wait. What was that you said about becoming a land creature? Someone’s done that?”  
  
And that’s how Whirl learned about Orion. Well, he’d heard parts of the story as gossip before and tuned it out for the high quota of romantic drivel.  
  
Once upon a time, back when Whirl was still young, pre-disfiguration and busy elsewhere, queen Ariel had a somewhat naïve brother by the name of Orion. Orion had been infatuated with the land creature Megatron, a pirate. Megatron had been ever so seductive, trying to lure Orion out of the water, that Orion went well beyond what Megatron intended. He’d gone to a sea witch with few enough moral qualms, and he’d traded sound for legs so that he could live with Megatron on land.  
  
Unfortunately for Orion, that wasn’t quite the arrangement Megatron had in mind. Mer flesh is in itself magical and worth quite a neat fortune. Without his tail, Orion was useless to Megatron, and thus he was discarded.  
  
As far as cautionary tales went, Whirl had to admit that it was kind of relevant to his predicament. Legs were objectively silly things and not something he was eager to get stuck with. He’d seen enough land people drown to know that you couldn’t swim for shit with legs, only flail around like an idiot.  
  
On the other claw, it wasn’t as if he was some blue-eyed moron getting deceived. He had never even made eye contact with that land prince, so there was no way he was walking into a trap.  
  
No harm in at least running a hypothetical through Pharma thought Whirl.

  
  
That was a slight miscalculation, as there would definitely be some harm.  
  
“Tell me, Whirl, why do you of all people want legs? And don’t touch that.”  
  
Whirl looked up from where he was inspecting a row of bioluminescent somethings in glass bottles. Trust Pharma to keep interesting stuff in his cave, things just begging to be stolen or broken or both. He intentionally tapped the tip of one claw against the glass.  
  
“You mean why someone would hypothetically want legs, in a completely fictional and in no way related to reality scenario,” he tapped the glass in time with the words. Whatever was inside squirmed like a worm, making the light ripple.  
  
“I did not corner the morally questionable niche of sea witchery to answer hypothetical questions. What kind of kink is this about?”  
  
Pharma did look tired, more than he usually did when a wrecker showed up to bug him, and he was likely already ready to cause some serious injury, but Whirl never could resist the urge to push his luck. He clasped his claws together and produced his best mockery of an innocent face.  
  
“Would you believe me if I said I wanted to roll down a grassy hill or dance a waltz?”  
  
He did a little twirl on the spot for good measure.  
  
“No.”  
  
Whirl expertly dropped the bad charade in favour of a more believable, more nonchalant one.  
  
“Fine. Some prince on land is royally hot, and I wanna smash. You get my drift?” he waggled his eyebrows for good measure.  
Pharma's eyes narrowed, and there was some kind of muscle spasm in his face. Come to think of it, he'd been in a bad mood already when Whirl showed up. Maybe someone had died while Whirl was busy in the harbour.  


“Oh, I get you alright, I get you. Yeah, I have just the thing you need for that, give me a tic. A magic wand that can transform your tail into legs.”

  
Pharma swam up to a high shelf and pulled out a thin and rather unimpressive stick and several thin shale plates covered in scribbles. Whirl perked up for real this time.  
  
“Oooh, did you steal that from Killmaster? I know Killmaster has one of those, never gotten legs from it, though.”  
  
Pharma made a dismissive gesture as he skimmed through the writing.  
  
“No, this is a different wand. Produced in Kimia by Brainstorm and associated lunatics, it runs on - narrative conventions? That has to be a code for something else.”  
  
“Cool, cool, so you just wave that thing at me and presto legs, prince-banging time?”  
  
“No,” Pharma answered while still consulting the plates, obviously determined to ignore Whirl’s very expressive body language. “There has to be some kind of exchange, or it won't work. Since this madness's entire goal is to, and I quote, ‘bang’ someone, the marriage setting should apply. You’re going to die if he isn’t interested.”  
  
Whirl had not treated his well-being with care for a very long time, and he had flirted with death more than once, but generally, that had been when he’d had a reliable chance of getting some reward proportionate to the risk. Whirl briefly thought back to the kind of “interest” he’d garnered from strangers over the last few years and found that the risk/gain calculation wasn’t exactly inspiring confidence.  
  
“That seems like crazy high stakes for a crush. What kind of deadline would I have for making him interested? And how interested-”  
  
“Generally speaking, if he’s proposing marriage, you’re safe; if he gets hitched to someone else, you’re toast. You’ll notice when you drop dead. The magic will do that automatically.”  
  
“So hypothetically-”  
  
“Language!”  
  
“- if I prevent him from getting attached to someone else, I’ll get an infinite deadline?”  
  
Pharma consulted the tablets again.  
  
“I don’t see why not. Good luck making that happen, though. Oh, and the death by disinterest clause does not cover the cost of getting legs; you have to give something else too. The last person who gave this a try gave up his eardrums, but you’re going to need all the senses that you have.” He gave Whirl a critical look from top to tail and back again. “Honestly, I don’t think you have all that much worth giving. You don’t even have a complete set of eyes. How many kidneys do you have?”  
  
“Dunno, I haven’t checked in a while. And for your information, I’m hot stuff. I’ve seduced lots of people, many of whom did not run away to marry someone else the moment I got explicit,” lied Whirl, a person who during the last few years had indeed scared off all potential partners the moment he showed interest.  
  
Pharma put the tablets down with a sharp clack and smiled much too wide for comfort.  
  
Ah, right. Pharma’s old crush Ratchet went and married Drift not long ago. Bad timing. And a poor choice of words too, come to think of it.  
  
“You know what, Whirl, I’m going to do you a favour. Words aren’t your strong suit, and all anyone ever cares about is how someone looks, so you’re dead anyway.”  
  
Whirl lamented whatever attention-deficit idea it was that had placed him in the corner of the cave with Pharma between him and the only exit. He needed a weapon.  
  
“I’m rethinking this leg endeavour; I want a second opinion,” Whirl quipped and threw one of the luminous glass bottles at Pharma. It made a pathetic little slow-motion arc before sinking to the floor with a neat little tink.  
  
Pharma aimed the wand.  
  
“Say bye-bye to your gills bitch.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Whirl is properly introduced his love interests, and some other people.

Whirl blacked out after Pharma jabbed the wand at him, so he had no idea how he could end up on the beach where he had dumped the prince.

“Don’t panic. Don’t panic, you’ve done this before and he’s breathing so he can’t be dead. Don’t- oh, you’re awake! Stay calm, I’ve done this before, you’ll be fine. Are you a prince too? Not implying that I am a prince, I mean the last time I found someone unconscious on the beach it was the prince so that - no? Okay you look like you need a doctor-”

Whirl tuned out the blabbering and focused his eye on the short round figure. Same shortstack that found the prince, figures. Whirl struggled to get up and tried to growl, but coughed out a whole lot of water instead. Fucking Pharma. There was sand in in a crevice roughly where his second dorsal fin had been and he was not a fan of the experience, or the company.

He was so annoyed that he almost bit the hand that appeared in front of his face, before he realized that the shortstack wanted to help him up. Whirl slapped the hand out of his face and managed to lurch upright on his own, but shortstack still took him by the arm when he wobbled.

“Come on, Dr Aid should still be in the palace. It’s not far and, ah, here, let’s wrap my jacket around your waist. Perfect, come on!”

Whirl wasn’t sure if his legs were supposed to hurt or if it was a side effect from how new they were, but walking sure as hell hurt a lot.

The shortstack held on to Whirl’s elbow the whole way from the beach, through the town and into the palace. It was annoying, but at least it gave Whirl a fastpass to where he needed to be. Even with the way the palace towered over its surroundings, Whirl would have been a bit lost without the help.

He already knew that everything sounded different on land, thinner without the water, but now he was surrounded by sound in a way he hadn’t been when he hid below the docks. And smells, they passed a bakery and Whirl had never smelled something like fresh bread before. And he felt so heavy, locked to the ground. Everyone was, they all moved around each other. He’d known that land creatures couldn't swim above or below one another, didn’t have access to that level of mobility, but it was crippling to experience it firsthand.

Rather than going through the main gate to the palace, shortstack led them around to a smaller much smaller side entrance. Whirl’s presence didn’t exactly go unquestioned, but shortstack - Tailgate, the people called him - wailed about emergency and bustled them through the labyrinth of narrow corridors and stairways like an octopus squeezing through corals.

They tumbled out into a corridor so wide and plushly carpeted that it had to be a main part of the palace, only a few paces from a door where Tailgate finally stopped to knock. Whirl took the opportunity to stop and sink down to the carpet. Nice, soft carpet. His feet were screaming from the long walk and the last rush through the palace, and Whirl didn’t bother to pay attention to what Tailgate was doing or saying at the door. Something Cyclonus something something, “found at the beach” something doctor. Not Whirl’s problem.

Except when Tailgate’s chatter petered off and Whirl looked up, he found himself facing rather trademark purple clothes. And further up familiar cheekbones. He gave the prince a jaunty wave in acknowledgement and didn’t struggle too much when he was offered help up this time.

  
Doctor Aid and his assistant Ambulon started out making a lot of fuss about Whirl’s missing eye, many scars, fucked up mouth, deformed hands, and rail thin body, but once it was established that he wasn’t actively dying they chilled out and stopped prodding him so damn much.

Aside from swatting at them when they got too close, Whirl didn’t pay them any mind. Tailgate and the prince (Cyclonus, that's what Tailgate had called him) had led him into some kind of guest room and sat him down in a large soft armchair, and Whirl was happily melting into the upholstery.

“What is your name?” asked Cyclonus.

Whirl pointed at his own neck and shook his head. Tailgate and Cyclonus looked at each other.

“I don’t think he has made a single sound since I found him,” Tailgate offered, and Whirl nodded along.

“Were you in a shipwreck?” asked Tailgate, taking over the interrogation.

Shake.

“Do you live in the town?”

Shake.

“Do you have famil-”

Shake.

At that, Tailgate made an unhappy sound and clasped Whirl’s claw in his hands.

“Oh, I am so sorry to hear - erh, what I mean is, is there any way we can help you?”

Nod. Assorted gestures to the effect of “feed me”. Aid and Ambulon agreed that, in addition to neating up the empty eye socket, getting some weight on Whirl would have to be a priority. Tailgate nipped off at record speed, and Whirl imagined that the little runt was worried about becoming dinner. He’d never seen land creatures eat each other at the harbour but he knew they ate meat so the possibility was there.

  
Whirl wasn’t sure what it was Aid and Ambulon did to his eye socket, but it involved a lot of cleaning and prodding until Whirl got fed up and snapped after their fingers. After that they put bandages over the missing eye and left him alone, but with threats of returning with a prosthetic.

Meanwhile Cyclonus had procured clothes in roughly Whirl’s size, and by the time Tailgate returned with a brimming food tray Whirl was dressed like a proper land creature.

The hot soup was as much a novelty as feet, clothes, gravity and lack of voice, but much more pleasant. Whirl polished off two of the three bowls and most of the beer, partly because he was hungry but mostly to see if they’d tell him to stop.

After that, Tailgate explained that he had work to do and would have to leave them until evening. Which left Whirl with Cyclonus who sighed ever so wistfully while looking at Tailgate’s back.

  
Whirl spent as much time as he could muster following Cyclonus around, that had been what this whole leg endeavor had been about after all. But he grew restless without anything to do, no way to vent the thoughts that bubbled and rattled in his head, and people kept looking at him. He’d spent so much time among the wreckers he’d almost forgotten the way normal people would react to seeing his face.

Instead he hobbled his way out of the palace and only got a little lost on his way to the harbour. There were much too many people around, both in the town and in the harbour, but they were busy people and the clothes Cyclonus had given him made it easier to hide his deformities and blend in. Heck, even if all else went belly up he’d at least enjoy the opportunity for anonymity. The eye patch and the oversized hooded cloak still got attention, but it was a background sort of attention that wondered at what kind of weapons and/or stolen goods he carried, which was an improvement compared to the wide-eyed horror his face usually inspired.

He found a nice, out of the way corner, stole a bottle of alcohol, and settled in to watch people and drink his thoughts away.

  
When evening fell he knew he should go back to the palace and get working on sabotaging whatever love life Cyclonus might have. Or at least take the opportunity to continue ogle him up close while he could. He didn’t feel like it though. He was hungry and hungover and somewhere in his gut an abyss had sprung up, cold and empty and wretched.

His self-pitying misery was interrupted by an old man holding out a loaf of bread to him, urging him to take it with gestures. Whirl recognised him as one of the dockworkers that would mill around the harbour. A tall and strong guy who’d hide behind his lapels at any opportunity. He stuck out because of those upturned lapels, and by being paler than the rest of the workers.

The bread was easier to chew than raw fish, though the chewy crust gave him trouble. It still tasted faintly the way that the bakery had smelled in the morning.

Whirl wasn’t very good at saying “thank you” during the best of circumstances, doing it without a voice was not at the table at all. He tapped his neck and shook his head to signal that verbal gratitude would not be happening.

The man nodded solemnly, tapped his ear and shook his head.

Different scars, same shark, thought Whirl and left it at that. The abyss in his gut felt shallower with the bread filling out most of it, so he got to his feet and - oh, yeah, that’s why he’d been sitting down. His feet still hurt as if something had bitten the skin off his soles.

The deaf old man accompanied Whirl for a short bit, before turning towards the beach. Whirl noticed that he had some kind of wooden stick to lean against as he walked. That might be a good idea, it looked as if it could take some weight off his feet.

Whirl knew that he should get back to the palace the shortest way possible, because his feet would be in agony before he got there anyway and the beach was the opposite direction. Then again, Whirl was a curious bitch and his feet were hurting anyway, so he set out to stalk the man through the dusk.

  
They weren’t just going towards the beach, but to almost exactly the same place where Whirl had woken up that morning. There was a crumbling old stone pier going out into the sea here, and in the gloom Whirl could see the distant shape of the rocks he’d napped by forever ago. The old man limped out over the rocks of the pier. When he’d deemed he’d gotten far enough he sat down, took off his boots and dangled his feet in the water with a blissful look to his face.

  
Whirl wouldn’t lie (well, he would, but only when there was someone around to lie to), putting his aching feet in some nice chill water seemed like an even better idea than the walking stick. He wasn’t going to go up to his target yet though. Instead he plonked his ass down in the sand to see if something interesting would happen.

Then something interesting happened.

Kup showed his ancient head right there in front of the man on the pier. Granted, the wreckers were generally not so concerned about whether land creatures saw them or not (said land creatures rarely lived long after facing a wrecker), but Kup was getting a little too arthritic to be a proper wrecker and was setting up a retirement spot for himself in queen Ariel’s territory. And queen Ariel was an absolute bitch about interacting with land creatures, huge no-no.

“Hey kid. Have you seen a gangly idiot around? With a messed up face?” Kup asked, making gestures with his hands as he spoke. The various slashing and eye-gouging motions at ‘messed up face’ made it abundantly clear who he was referring too.

The man nodded and made gestures, the tattletale, so Whirl decided it was confrontation time and rose from the sand.

Kup waved at him, which alerted the man on the pier who turned around and looked insultingly unsurprised at seeing Whirl hobbling down the pier towards them.

Whirl had a lot of questions and few means of asking, so he pointed at his neck to indicate that communication would have to be improvised.

“Yes, I heard about that,” Kup said, which added to Whirl’s unspoken questions. “Having fun in the beached idiot club then? Have you made friends with Orion?” Kup motioned towards the man. Whirl made a bewildered gesture towards the same because that sounded as if the miserable old man was queen Ariel’s missing brother.

“The former crown prince himself,” Kup confirmed, “we’re lucky he’s still alive. Ratchet thinks someone is looking after him but it’s a devil to pantomime everything. Do you have somewhere to stay?”

Well, he hoped so, if he could slip into the palace again. He nodded.

“Did you meet the prince? Don’t give me that look, Impactor made some inquiries and Pharma sang like a seagull.”

People usually did when Impactor wanted to know something. He nodded again.

“Do you in full honesty think that you have a chance at seducing that prince?”

To hell with Pharma and his big blabbering mouth. He shrugged. Kup knew as well as anyone else with eyes what Whirl looked like.

“Good enough I guess. I’ll be here every day at sunset until Ratchet’s back from his honeymoon. He’s the one usually checking in on Orion.”

Whirl grimaced. He had a feeling the old grump would be less than impressed with Whirl’s less than thought through decision. Even if it had technically been Pharma’s fault.

  
They stayed for a little longer at the beach, so that Kup could show Whirl a few helpful signs (and some that Whirl couldn’t imagine using until he knew how to convey sarcasm in signs, like “thank you”). Partly so that Whirl could communicate beyond yes and no answers, but probably mainly so that Orion could tell him things without going through Kup. Orion seemed to have a lot of mixed feelings about the development, making sad faces whenever Kup reminded them that they were stuck on the same metaphorical boat. Whirl couldn’t blame him for the uncomfortable looks - alright fine he could and did, but a lot of people got uncomfortable when they realized that they had to spend time around Whirl so that was nothing new.

Kup also revealed how Whirl had ended up on the beach, once Whirl managed to figure out an understandable pantomime of the question. Springer had worried over how frequently Whirl ditched them after the prince-rescuing stunt and had gone to his old mentor for guidance. Kup had figured out more or less what was going on and miraculously they had reached Pharma’s cave just as Pharma was hauling Whirl’s unconscious body towards the surface. Kup was a little vague on the details but it seemed like the general idea had been for Orion to find Whirl, except they had no way of telling Orion to come down to the beach so Tailgate had found Whirl instead.

As interesting as all that was to Whirl, it was by then late and nearly impossible to see gestures, so the three of them soon departed for the night. Kup ducked down into the sea, no walking for that lucky bastard, and Orion walked off towards a gathering of small houses on the outskirts of the town, leaning heavily on his walking stick as he went.

Whirl thought about that walking stick on his way to the palace, and when he walked across a bridge with a railing at the right height he tried to lean on it the way the old man had leaned on the stick. It didn’t help much but it was something.

When he tried to sneak into the palace through the servants’ entrance he was accosted by a young woman who took one look at Whirl, said “Oh, you must be him. Come on, I’ll show the way”, and then did so. Whirl would have been amazed if he hadn't been so tired.

She introduced herself as Verity and led Whirl straight to the room where the prince had been earlier that day. And it was straight to the room, without skulking through the servants’ secret tunnels in the walls. Whirl took the opportunity to remove his footwear and reacquaint himself with the very plush carpet in the hallway while she knocked on the door.

And then the prince was there, looking just as stupid as he had the last time.

“You came back,” Cyclonus said, looking ever so slightly pleased. Enough so that it warmed Whirl’s traitorous squishy insides. Somewhere off in the periphery Verity excused herself and scurried off.

“We worried that you had left already. Tailgate was upset that he wouldn’t get to wish you a good night. I’ve arranged a room you can stay in for the time being, it’s the same one doctor Aid examined you in. I’m sure Tailgate will want to speak to you tomorrow.”

Whirl made an imploring gesture towards Cyclonus - which is to say that he jabbed him in the chest. Cyclonus understood anyway.

“I will see you tomorrow as well. Do you remember the way to your room? This way.”

During the short walk through the carpeted hallways, Whirl was planning his strategies. Mainly how he could most obstructively chaperone Cyclonus and Tailgate who seemed suspiciously chummy, but as soon as he was alone in the guest room and his back hit the mattress he felt himself drift away. After so much walking the downy bed felt as buoying as floating on the ocean surface. But better, he decided as he smushed his face into a pillow. You couldn’t snuggle down against the water after all. His insides felt rather warm and floaty too for that matter. He fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did about as much eye injury research as I could stomach (admittedly not much I'm squeamish) and I'm going to handwave Whirl's lack of deadly infection by flashing the "mermaid magic" card. Keep that card in mind it will become slightly plot relevant later.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Whirl gets to know Cyclonus and Tailgate a little better, Magnus and Rodimus are introduced, Wheeljack and ~~Rang~~ ~~Rong~~ Rung are mentioned, and Whirl is speed.

Whirl woke up tangled in a blanket with a very vague memory of someone draping it over him. -he struggled out of the blanket and fought down the half-dream half-memory of being tucked in. Actually, make that three-quarter dream and one quarter, no - half a quarter memory. Whirl wasn’t the kind of person that got tucked in.

The sun was already high in the sky, so Tailgate must be busy working already. Whirl dismissed the idea of finding Cyclonus right away, in favour of hunting down the source of the soup Tailgate had fetched yesterday. He was hungry, and he didn’t favour the idea of absent-mindedly chewing his target. Not even the wreckers had been okay with being nibbled and they were a weathered bunch.

Not that he missed them, and Whirl told himself as much as he followed his nose through the narrow corridors and stairways in the walls. They were never friends, he reminded himself as he bullied his way into a bustling kitchen. They’d only ever fitted together as a group because they were all bastards and they hunted well together, he thought as he traumatized the unfortunate kitchen staff by trying to eat a raw fish until someone gave him a bowl of soup and a bread bun instead.

There weren’t a lot of people who could brag about wrecking ships unassisted, but the wreckers could. Springer and Kup were just naturally unnaturally soft-hearted and would have helped anyone. Impactor, well, Impactor must have had fun bullying Pharma. Whirl happened to be a convenient excuse for that.

Whirl resurfaced from his homesickness and half-hearted attempt at denial when his someone’s-talking-shit sense tingled. The kitchen staff, at a safe distance from his person, was gossiping.

”-Wonder if he’ll have any tall tales about rescuing that guy too or if he’ll limit himself to the prince.”

“Remember how right after he found the prince on the beach he started telling everyone how he’d pulled him out of the waves, all but out of the mouth of a shark?”

“As if we hadn’t only days ago found out how he lied to everyone about being an undercover champion sword master pretending to work as a servant.”

“To me he said he was a noble hiding from assassins sent by evil relatives.”

“He told me that he owned a horse.”

“I don’t know why the prince would give him so much attention all of a sudden. He must have hit his head in the shipwreck, it wasn’t that long ago he smacked the little guy around for lying, and now he’s fawning over him like this.”

Whirl eyed a knife that some careless person had left within grabbing distance. The kitchen staff annoyed him. He wasn’t sure why exactly but that was unimportant. What was important was if he could get away with stabbing them a little to vent his frustrations. He deemed it unlikely, and left the kitchen with as much food as he could carry before he was further tempted.

Cyclonus found him huddled in a window overlooking the ocean.

“Do you have any plans for today?” Cyclonus asked.

Whirl shrugged. He’d already hidden his new stash of food, so that was hunting taken care of. He’d meet Orion later for more sign language lessons with Kup, but that wasn’t until the end of the day.

“I wish to acknowledge that I was- flawed, in my hospitality yesterday. I did not mean to imply that your company was- unwanted, but my social graces are- somewhat lacking.” Cyclonus forced the words out, with strange starts and stops, as if he was reading from a script. And for some reason he was looking at Whirl’s shoulder instead of his face, which was rather noteworthy since Whirl’s shoulders were usually the least eye-catching bit of his disfigured anatomy.

The whole thing was boggling. Flawed hospitality? Social graces?? Whirl wasn’t sure what that last thing was, but the man had literally provided Whirl, the ugliest mug outside of the deep abyss, with every scrap of safety he had in this alien world: food, clothes and a place to sleep. And he'd done it without anyone putting a knife to his neck. Whirl tugged at his shirt and signed “good” with a strong definition behind the gesture.

Cyclonus’ face looked as blank as before, but he at least rallied enough confidence to look Whirl in the face.

“Since I don’t have any pressing work today, I was thinking that if you want, we could do something that you would enjoy. What would you do for fun before Tailgate found you at the beach?”

Whirl thought about it for a flicker of a moment and then brought his fists up in pantomime of the fights he’d seen between some dockworkers. Fisticuffs hadn’t been his method of fighting under water but it was close enough. There had been a time when he had pursued more dexterous hobbies of course, but he was a few fingers short for that now.

To his surprise, Cyclonus seemed amused.

“A brawler? I suppose that explains some of your injuries. Would you like to go a round against me?”

Would Whirl like to wrestle prince Hunky, grapple up close and personal, get his miserable claws on that beef? Why yes, he would like that very much.

Cyclonus led Whirl to what had to be some kind of sparring room. While Whirl eyed the weapons (old wood replicas and some rusty relics living out their last years of usefulness) Cyclonus negotiated access to the room with some humongous man in fancy guard uniform. Whirl wasn’t sure why Cyclonus was so keen on permission from this guy. His name was Sir Magnus so he couldn’t rank higher than a prince.

Whirl offered his best smile and Magnus eyes went a predictable route; the toothy grin, the eye patch, the hooded cape. He insisted that if Whirl and Cyclonus were to fight then they’d fight unarmed and naked from the waist up. That suited Whirl like a dream.

Sparring with Cyclonus was, in a word, exhilarating. Pain shmain, Whirl could still move almost as fast as he had in the sea, and he danced around Cyclonus to jab him in the back whenever he got an opening. Gravity still weighed him down, but he felt lighter than he ever had before on land, going faster and faster as Cyclonus learned his moves and tried to keep up.

His pulse thrummed through him harder than the pain as he narrowly ducked under an arm, spun tightly on the spot to tap Cyclonus on the back again. Cyclonus turned to face him in almost the same instance but Whirl followed the motion, maintaining his place and jabbing one more time before he was in front of Cyclonus again.

Cyclonus tried in vain to adhere to some kind of honourable rulebook that Whirl had never heard of (and wouldn’t have respected even if he had) until he finally snapped and tackled Whirl to the floor. If Whirl had still been in possession of a voice he might have cackled, he’d have laughed at the very least. He feet were hurting all the way up to his thighs, a deep throbbing pain like torn muscles.

But he felt alive and grounded in the world, present and focused and yes, pinned to the floor by a hot prince in what was without a doubt a rather compromising position. Cyclonus hadn’t bothered with finesse any more when he tackled Whirl, just lunged for his midsection. The way they had twisted so that it was Cyclonus’ shoulder that had taken the brunt of the fall was an unexpected coincidence, but it had the interesting side effect that they were now rather entwined. Heck, Whirl was almost between Cyclonus’ thighs, and wasn’t that a nice place to be?

Magnus coughed somewhere in the distance, Whirl grinned and waggled his eyebrows, Cyclonus groaned and untangled himself. Whirl allowed himself a brief moment of mourning as Cyclonus’ arms left his waist. Both were breathing heavy from the exertion, but Whirl’s pulse had slowed down from the manic pace and bit by bit his world expanded from the narrow radius of a few feet that had been the here-and-now.

Cyclonus got up first and made a motion to help Whirl to his feet, but Whirl declined. Instead Whirl sat up on his own, and was surprised to see Cyclonus sit back down with him to observe as Whirl prodded his own feet and legs. Far as Whirl could tell he hadn’t actually pulled anything, it didn’t increase the pain when he prodded them. Walking was the problem, and he had a feeling it wasn’t the kind of problem that’d get better if only he didn't scratch it.

“Are you hurt?”

Shrug. Nod.

“Did I hurt you?”

Shake.

“Were you in pain yesterday too?”

A few days ago he’d have deflected the line of questioning already at the “are you hurt” nonsense, but his body language vocabulary only went so far. He nodded again, conveying as much casual energy as he could with the gesture.

“Why didn’t you tell- ah, apologies,” Cyclonus halted himself as Whirl gestured to his neck. “Even so, I am sorry to have made you walk around so much when you are hurt. Especially as we might have a solution close at hand.”

The solution turned out to be two walking sticks of similar make as the one Orion used, and some kind of wheeled behemoth that was brought from an attic storage room by some very unfortunate servants. It was not very staircase-friendly, or rather, the staircase wasn’t very behemoth-friendly, what with their spiralling uneven nature. Still, Whirl calculated that a very daring driver would be able to get down the main stairs well enough with it. They were old stone, low and with rounded edges after centuries of use. The real challenge would be how to stop.

“These used to belong to a distant aunt of mine, she lived here long ago. Popular rumour has it she built the chair herself. I’m sure we can adjust it and the crutches to fit you, or use them as a blueprint for new ones.”

The sticks, crutches, were too short by far, and the chair wide enough that two Whirls could have sat next to each other in it, but Whirl still bubbled with excitement as he experimentally wheeled the chair around. It forced him to look up at people, which he didn’t like at all, but the wheels allowed him to go _fast_ , something he had missed since he left the sea. And, important factor to consider, he could go fast without involving his feet in any way.

An artificer, Jack, was brought in from the town. Measurements were taken, advance payments made, lots of bragging from the Jack guy. Whirl was promised that a pair of brand new custom made crutches would be delivered the very next day, but he was allowed to keep the wheelchair until then.

Whirl spent the rest of the day idling around Cyclonus while they waited until Tailgate was free for the day. Cyclonus still drifted off into a pile of paperwork or his own head from time to time, but Whirl resisted the urge to bolt and find excitement elsewhere. Barely.

They were waiting outside the servants’ quarters when Tailgate came down the narrow service stairs. As soon as he saw him Whirl did his best whirlpool-on-land impression by spinning on the spot, arms straining to make the wheels go fast enough. When he was done showing off Cyclonus could finally explain that he had discovered Whirl’s discomfort and called for the wheelchair to be retrieved.

When it looked like they were about to get sappy about Whirl’s little ouchie Whirl was quick to interrupt them by manhandling Tailgate up and into the chair with him. Before he could escape Whirl zipped up and down the hallway, around Cyclonus in a tight spin, and then some more spinning simply because he could. Tailgate spent the whole ride screaming “faster” and Whirl was happy to oblige, until prince killjoy forcefully grabbed the armrests and tersely pointed out that they were a little too close to the cellar stairway.

Whirl deposited Tailgate outside the servants’ quarters and received a very soft strangulation for his efforts.

“Thanks for the ride. Does this mean you’re staying here? You’re not leaving? That’s good. I’m sorry I couldn’t spend more time with you today but tomorrow we’ll hang out for sure!”

The weird and almost horrible thing was that Whirl wanted to believe him. The little blight must’ve been a world class liar, the way his whole face lit up as if he really meant every word.

After Tailgate had gone to bed, Whirl and Cyclonus negotiated the parking spot for the wheelchair. They left it in some kind of storage room on the ground floor, and then they parted ways. Cyclonus presumably went to bed, Whirl was late for his sign language class.

It was tempting to bring the chair and clatter his way over the cobblestones through town, but it would get stuck in the sand, and he was not taking the risk of leaving it by the road while he was out on the old pier. Thieves could steal it there, fuck knows he would if he came across such a contraption left unguarded.

It was very late by the time he reached the beach, Orion and Kup were already out on the pier in an animated conversation of flappy hand gestures that Whirl did not understand at all. What he did understand was the dirty rotten spy huddled behind the same goddamn crag that Whirl had hunkered behind yesterday to spy on Orion.

Less than a minute later Whirl was hauling the little rat out to the pier by his bright red hair, waving merrily to Kup and Orion to display his catch. If Whirl had been able to speak, or if he’d known the right signs, he would have commented on the intensity of traffic this one godforsaken beach seemed to have. Instead he thrust the violently swearing land creature in front of himself and tried to look meaningfully at the others.

Kup took that as his cue to speak for them, which was fair since he was the one who could.

“Well what do we have here?”

“Rodi-fucking-mus! Let go of me I live with Orion! I know he’s-” The howling of the brat petered out as he gestured towards Kup ”-whatever you are. Mermaid or something. From the sea. I’ve watched enough conversations to get the gist of it.”

It took some untangling, but between Kup and the brat talking and using sign language so Orion could verify as needed, they managed to get a cohesive enough story out of Rodimus that Whirl understood the gist of it.

Somewhere at the edge of town lived a little old man, older than Orion. Some kind of cleric with a big bleeding heart, who had opened his home for the poor lonely deaf Orion and the self proclaimed charming street rat Roddy. Or Rodimus. He had picked his name himself and it showed. The old coot, Rang or something, had been the one working out a sign language with Orion.

Whirl shuffled off to he side and sat down to dip his aching feet in the cold ocean water when it was clear he wasn’t needed in the conversation. Rodimus wasn’t making trouble and Whirl didn’t care all that much about the weird adoptive family situation. By the time they had hashed out how much they cared about each other and so on there wasn’t a whole lot of time for sign language lessons, but Rodimus did come up with the bright idea that they could introduce Whirl to Rong and have him teach the sign language in proper daylight.

When Whirl got back to the castle, and more importantly to his room, he was drained after a too long day and he fell asleep the moment he fell over his bed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl tries panic instead of violence and doesn't like it, Cyclonus makes another social faux pas, and Tailgate is a little badass.

On his third day on land, Whirl was introduced to the threat of a prosthetic eye.

He hadn’t paid attention to the word while doctor Aid and Ambulon had been fussing over him, but now they were back, and they wanted to put some kind of eye-sized marble in Whirl’s empty eye socket.

Whirl, who was on his way back from another successful hunting trip to the kitchen, decided to be as rational as he reasonably could be in this distressing situation. Which is to say, he lobbed the loaf of bread at Aid, tossed the mug of beer at Ambulon and the wretched prosthetic, ducked, and ran past them to Cyclonus’ room for backup.

Backup, which turned out to be rather lacklustre. When Aid and Ambulon came to the door, Cyclonus did not instantly condemn the prosthetic eye or banish it from the kingdom or any other grand useful thing. Instead, he had the gall to mutter something about how it would be good? For Whirls health??

It was almost as bad as when he’d been cornered by Pharma. Almost. But unlike the cave, the room had windows, and unlike below the surface, throwing things actually worked up here. Which is why Whirl threw a chair at Cyclonus, kicked the window into a cascade of tinkling shards, and climbed out before anyone could reach him. He cut his hands in the process but didn’t lose another finger, so that didn’t matter. He was very high off the ground, and a sucking feeling in the pit of his guts reminded him that gravity and fall damage was a thing.

So, no throwing himself heedlessly to safety. Whirl had thrown enough things above water to have a pretty good idea of what would happen when he hit the cobblestones down below. Splat would happen. That was not an option unless it looked like they were catching up to him.

He wedged all available fingers into the crevices of the palace stones and edged sideways like the most cautious crab, scrambling for purchase with his feet. There was some kind of smaller building not too far away, almost wall-to-wall with the palace, with a soft-looking thatch roof.

It was challenging to find crevices wide enough to wedge his boots into, so he tried kicking them off once he was out of grabbing distance from the window. He got one boot off, but that nearly made him lose his grip, so he refocused on moving sideways. He ignored the shouting from the window until he was close enough to kick away from the wall towards the thatch roof.

He made it, but only barely. He tumbled off the edge, but at least his fall had been broken first. Landing on his legs still hurt, though, and his boot-less foot refused to cooperate when he tried to stand up. He pushed himself harder to see if the foot would fix itself if he just got it in position, and spots danced before his eyes as he crumpled back to the ground. His ankle throbbed as if it had its very own heart down there.

This was why good behaviour didn’t pay off. He should have killed the doctors on the spot, or at least after he’d clubbed Cyclonus with the chair.

He tried to stand up again without putting weight on the damaged ankle and, again, toppled over. The wheelchair would have come in handy, but it was still inside the castle. The crutches would have been helpful, but they were still in Jack’s workshop waiting to be picked up.

He still had his hands and one leg, though. People were pouring out of the palace, Cyclonus and the doctors among them. Whirl scooted into what he hoped was a more intimidating position, making a display of showing his teeth to make it as clear as he could that whoever reached him first would pay for it with blood. He bumped into something soft and looked up to see a horrified Tailgate. Before Whirl could take him hostage, he was already between Whirl and the mob, arms stretched wide.

“Stop! Stop right now! What do you think you’re doing!?”

Cyclonus stopped cold, which effectively halted everyone else as well. He didn’t say anything, so Ambulon, still dripping beer, held up the wretched marble and explained.

“He needs a prosthetic eye, that’s all. It’s for his own good, or would have been if he hadn’t done himself more damage running away like that.”

Tailgate turned to Whirl.

“Do you need a pros-?” Whirl was already shaking his head, so Tailgate turned back to the others with his hands on his hips. “He doesn’t need it. Stop bullying him!”

“But he does need it!” Ambulon wailed. “It’s a miracle the socket isn’t already completely deformed with those scars. We’re trying to prevent that kind of complications - and infections.”

Whirl, wishing more than ever that he had his voice, gestured to his many missing fingers and copious facial scarring because seriously? Deformity? Not an issue anymore. As long as he had the eye patch, whatever happened in the socket would be the least visible deformity on his body.  
Tailgate hunched down to put a protective arm around Whirl.

“It’s his body, and if he says he doesn’t need the marble, then he doesn’t need the marble!”

“He’s right,” admitted Aid, rubbing a hand over his face in a tired gesture. “And this is our fault for coming on too strong, but we genuinely didn’t come out here to force the prosthetic on him. We were worried because he threw himself out of a window and is obviously injured," he then refocused on Whirl. "May I please have a look at you while Ambulon goes to wash off the beer you threw at him? No more prosthetics, you have my word. And by the look of him, Tailgate would deck me if I lied about that.”

“I would,” Tailgate asserted and then turned to Cyclonus. “I think he needs the wheelchair.”

Cyclonus didn’t say anything but turned around and walked back inside. A woman that Whirl remembered as Verity got to work shooing off the rest of the onlookers.

“Go on! I know we all have work to do. Stop crowding the poor thing, or I’ll rat you all out to uncle Magnus! You too, Bradley, off with you!”

His adrenaline rush had worn off by now, but Whirl still had enough common sense to make Ambulon give him the wretched prosthetic eye so he could throw it away himself. After that, he could relax enough to let Aid look him over and bandage up his ankle. It likely wasn’t completely broken, which was good news, but it was severely sprained, and he had an assortment of scrapes, bruises, and cuts after his little self-inflicted defenestration.

It wasn’t Cyclonus who came back with the wheelchair. It was some servant Whirl didn’t know or care about and who Whirl had to shoo off so he could crawl up in the seat while Tailgate held the chair steady. The nobody servant instead told Tailgate that he (Tailgate) was officially relieved of his regular schedule for the day so that he could continue bodyguarding Whirl.

By then, Whirl had squirmed into place, and since Tailgate had already proven useful once that day, Whirl moved around and hoisted him up into his lap. Safe and snug. A little heavy but endurable.

They spent the day in the town. A lot of it was spent wheeling up and down different streets until Tailgate realised that they were looking for Jack’s workshop and could give directions.

Jack’s workshop was a magnificent treasure trove of things Whirl wanted to steal. His fingers itched at the sight of tools and cogwheels, not just the fingers he had; there was a phantom itch in the missing ones as well, a muscle memory of intricately interlocking mechanisms moving together.

The crutches were complete and perfect, though by far the most simplistic items in the crowded workshop. Whirl gave them a test-hobble around a table to confirm that they were the right size before they were attached to the wheelchair.

Tailgate and Jack agreed that Whirl shouldn’t be deprived of his wheelchair now that his foot was so bunged up, so Whirl was graciously invited to sit in the wheelchair in the shop while Jack constructed the new chair.

It was amazing.

It was torture.

After less than an hour, he grew too restless and started looting the nearest overflowing box on the work table. He couldn’t name all the little parts and tools inside, but it gave his brain something to latch on to when watching Tailgate’s game of solitaire grew boring. Jack glanced over but then refocused on assembling the frame.

Whirl got to work fitting cogwheels together. Half an hour later, he pushed the box and the loose cogs away in frustration, and Tailgate had to save them from toppling over the table. At this point, if the doctors had offered him prosthetic fingers, then he’d accepted wholeheartedly. Then he thought about it some more, slumped as a ragdoll over the table, and changed his mind. Prosthetic fingers would probably have as much dexterity as the marble had eyesight. They’d just get in the way of the few fingers he had left.

Jack, either in sympathy for Whirl, or for his property’s safety, insisted that he could finish the rest of the new wheelchair without the old one as reference and shooed them out.

“Remember to build the wheels so he can push himself easier,” said Tailgate before they went out the door. “They need to be in comfortable grabbing range for him, so he doesn’t have to strain so much.”

Whirl had planned to wheel back to the palace in a sulk, but just because Tailgate insisted on being so thoughtful, Whirl yanked him back into his lap, protests be damned.

He decided that after the day he had had, he had deserved an evening off. Orion, brat, Kup and the sign language lessons could all wait until Whirl felt better.

“We have to find a way for you to tell us your name,” Tailgate mumbled from Whirl’s lap. “We can’t just call you pronouns all the time. Maybe we can work on it tomorrow?”

Whirl mustered the energy to get the wheelchair in an enthusiastic spin to display his approval.


End file.
